[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 95 (Tuesday, July 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H4903-H4907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                ON TRADE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the minority leader.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but comment on the discussion 
that we have just had here before I talk about trade, because I think 
it has a distorted view of history. I would like to correct my 
colleagues who just spoke by reminding the American people that in 
1993, when the Clinton administration took office, they inherited a 
$300 billion annual deficit from the Republicans.

                              {time}  2100

  Three hundred billion. And, of course, in 1993, we passed a very 
important budget that has worked in several ways:
  It has eliminated literally hundreds of government programs. It 
reduced the Federal work force by 250,000 people, I believe. We have 
the lowest Federal work force since John F. Kennedy, the lowest Federal 
work force today. And it also brought the deficit down from the Bush 
Republican number of $300 billion annually down to about 65 this year, 
every year reducing that budget deficit. And not one Republican voted 
for that 1993 budget deal that basically has brought us into balance.
  So when my friends speak of spending, they have this convenient 
amnesia about their policies and how it was in the 1993 bill that we 
were able to finally get some control to the point now where our debt 
relative to our gross domestic product is the lowest of any Western 
developed nation in the world today.
  I want to turn to another subject, if I could, this evening, Mr. 
Speaker, and that is trade. I will be joined hopefully by a few of my 
colleagues to talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement and 
its effects on the people of Mexico and the United States over the past 
3\1/2\ years.
  We are engaging in this discussion because sometime this fall, we 
think, Congress will be asked to approve something that is known as 
fast track. Now, people are out there saying what is this fast track 
that he is talking about; is that some kind of a Washington special 
lingual term that is out there to confuse the rest of us? Well, fast 
track is an authority that the Congress surrenders to the 
administration to make a trade deal. Fast track forces Congress to 
accept or reject an entire trade agreement rather than allowing us to 
improve upon the agreement that is reached by our trade negotiators 
with other nations.
  The administration wants fast track, all administrations want fast 
track, in order to expand NAFTA to other nations in Central and South 
America. What we are saying is that, before we rush ahead to expand 
NAFTA, we should understand the effects it has already had on the 
workers in the United States and in Mexico.
  I try to use the analogy that, if our house has a flooded basement, 
our roof is burning and we have chaos in our house, we do not decide to 
build an addition to the house. We decide to take care of these 
problems that we have before we pass on improvements to our house. The 
same is true with our trade agreement.
  We will see much analysis of NAFTA over the next couple of weeks, 
starting later this week, when the administration is going to release a 
report on NAFTA, and we will discuss that a little later this evening. 
What I would like to discuss now is the remarkable election that took 
place on Sunday in Mexico.
  Mexico is our neighbor. There are good people in Mexico, hard-working 
people, people who are struggling, people who have had a very difficult 
time with human rights and democracy. Elections have repeatedly been 
stolen in Mexico.
  They had a very important election on Sunday. There were over 100 
million people in Mexico. Opposition on both the left and the right of 
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, as it is called, 
these opposition parties scored significant victories, victories that 
will unravel nearly 70 years of one-party rule in Mexico. And the 
biggest one ever was the Party of the Democratic Revolution, which is a 
party that is headed by Mr. Cardenas, who was overwhelmingly elected 
the mayor of Mexico City. And by the way, this is the first time they 
allowed the second most powerful position in Mexico, the mayor of 
Mexico City, to be elected.
  This election was significant for many reasons, but I want to focus 
on two of those reasons this evening. Most people agree that the 
conduct in the election on Sunday was not perfect but that it was by 
far the fairest national election conducted over the past 68 years in 
Mexico. This was the first real chance that the people of Mexico have 
had to see their ballots actually tallied and counted and not discarded 
or misplaced somewhere.
  The voters rejected the PRI. That is the 70-year ruling party. They 
protested its economic policies and they bravely chose change. Now, in 
the past, they have chosen change, but their ballots were not counted 
and elections were stolen from the people, and it was done on a regular 
basis. The most notable example was the Presidential election in 1988, 
not too long ago, in which most people believe that Cardenas handily 
beat Carlos Salinas only to have the apparent victory snatched from him 
by the PRI massive electoral fraud.
  In that election Cardenas' phones were tapped, his top aides were 
murdered, and the government halted the vote count on election night 
and declared Salinas the winner. Over the next 6 years, as many as 500 
Cardenas and PRD activists were murdered in an attempt to intimidate 
and silence the opposition. That is a startling, startling number. Five 
hundred of his supporters and activists were murdered by the ruling 
party.
  What amazed me through all of this was the acceptance of Carlos 
Salinas in America as some kind of savior, an intellectual, elite, 
smart, sophisticated individual. He fooled the entire elite 
intellectual community in this country.
  It has been said in Mexico that the PRI governed not from the ballots 
of democracy but from the bullets of revolution. It has also been 
called the perfect dictatorship by one of the great writers of Mexico, 
Octavio Paz. It was only a matter of time before these misdeeds of the 
PRI caught up with them, and on Sunday these misdeeds did catch up with 
them.
  While many people will try to characterize the vote on Sunday in 
Mexico as only being significant because it produced a major shift in 
power away

[[Page H4904]]

from the PRI, anybody who watched that election and listened to that 
election and analyzed that election and saw what the Mexican workers 
were going through, and I will describe that in a second, will 
understand clearly that this was significant because the Mexican people 
felt their economic situation needed to be changed.
  A major factor in the ascension of the PRD and Cardenas has been 
their economic program. Many people here probably believe that all of 
Mexico supported NAFTA, and that the loss of American jobs has greatly 
benefited Mexico. But that is not the case at all. In fact, it is just 
the opposite. The very few at the top, in our country and in Mexico and 
to some degree in Canada as well, have benefited well, but the majority 
of people, 80 percent of the American people, probably higher than that 
in Mexico, have suffered as a result of what I consider one of the 
worst treaties this country, if not the worst, has ever put together.
  Now, let me talk about what has happened there, because Mexico has 
been devastated since NAFTA through an economic crisis triggered by the 
devaluation of their peso, which we argued was going to happen when we 
debated NAFTA on this floor, and also by the PRI government policies 
that benefitted investors at the expense of the working people in 
Mexico. And, of course, investors were benefited in the United States 
at the expense of our workers.

  The PRD and Cardenas agree that NAFTA and the economic policies of 
the existing ruling party there, the PRI, are not working. They favor 
changing NAFTA to make it fair to workers in all three countries. In 
order for NAFTA to work, according to its opponents, we had to build a 
consumer market in Mexico.
  The idea was that we will have this free trade and the people that 
are producing things in Mexico will increase their salaries, and when 
they increase their salaries they will be able to buy more products 
from us, more consumer products, and everything will kind of just 
bubble up. Well, the opposite has happened. Everything has sort of 
bubbled down.
  That means ensuring that Mexican workers, under this theory, had jobs 
at wages in which they could afford to buy United States products. But, 
as I said, just the opposite has happened. The lives of millions of 
people in Mexico have been devastated, thanks in part to NAFTA, to the 
economic crisis precipitated by the peso devaluation in 1994, and to 
the wage controls forced on workers by the existing Government and the 
businesses and official labor unions it controls.
  There was a concerted effort, since 1980 basically, where the corrupt 
labor union in Mexico, which lost its leader, by the way, a man who was 
96 years old, who passed away, and maybe there is hope for change now, 
but he was in cahoots with the investors, the business elite, the 
foreign investors and the Government to keep wages low. The effects of 
these failed policies on workers in Mexico has been staggering. It has 
been staggering. That, in turn, had smoked out NAFTA for what it really 
was about, giving corporations investment guarantees in Mexico and then 
solidifying the role of the maquiladora region in Mexico, that is the 
area along the United States-Mexican border, and California, Arizona, 
New Mexico and Texas, solidifying the role of this area called the 
maquiladora region as an export platform.
  What does export platform mean? That means people produce to ship 
right back into this country. United States companies are shifting jobs 
to Mexico, paying Mexican workers about 10 percent of what American 
workers were being paid and are shipping their products right back here 
to the United States. The toll of this on Mexican workers has been 
severe. The gap between Mexico's richest and their poor has been 
rapidly expanding, as I might add, as it has been in the United States. 
Our gap between the rich and the poor in this country is growing ever 
more every year, every 4 or 5 years. It is expanding to an all-time 
high today.
  Twenty-eight thousand small businesses have failed in Mexico since 
NAFTA. The number of unemployed in Mexico doubled in 2 years. Our own 
embassy in Mexico estimated in late 1995 that 35 percent of Mexicans 
were either unemployed or underemployed. Real wages in Mexico are 27 
percent lower than in 1994 and 37 percent lower than they were in 1980. 
Real wages. And 19 percent of workers made less than the minimum wage, 
which is only $3.30 a day. Not an hour, $3.30 a day. And 66 percent of 
workers lack any benefits at all, any pension or health benefits.
  Eight million people. Listen to this. Since NAFTA, eight million 
people in Mexico have fallen from middle class status into poverty. 
Eight million in just 3\1/2\ years. And perhaps worst of all, millions 
of children have entered the work force to try to keep their families 
making ends meet.
  The Mexican people were stunned by all of this, as one can imagine. 
Their wages were cut. If they had any benefits, they were cut out. They 
were being dropped into poverty. Twenty-eight thousand of them lost 
businesses. The peso was devalued. They woke up one morning and the 
worth of the money they had in their pocket, or if they had a little 
savings account, dropped by 30 or 40 percent. So they were mad. They 
were mad. And they were stunned and they opted for change, and I 
believe the American people feel the same way about this treaty.
  Now, people say the economy is doing so well in the United States. It 
is doing extremely well for about 20 percent of Americans. They are 
doing incredibly well. Incredibly well. But for 80 percent of America, 
their wages have been stagnant since 1979. Almost 20 years. Going on 
almost 20 years now. And it is easy to understand, because corporations 
and companies are saying to workers, ``If you want a wage increase, you 
want pension benefit increases or health benefit increases, we are out 
of here; we are going to Mexico.''
  And do not take my word for it. There was a study done by Kate 
Bronfenbrenner, University of Cornell in New York, just done recently 
for the Labor Department. This study, by the way, was suppressed 
because of what it said. It said that 62 percent of businesses in this 
country use NAFTA as a lever, as a wedge against their own workers, 
saying that, ``If you demand too much, we are out of here; we are 
leaving.'' Sixty-two percent. An amazing number. An amazing figure.
  So there was change in Mexico. I believe the American people feel the 
same way about this. And if the vote on NAFTA were held today, I 
believe it would be a much different story because we are coming to 
realize that, after 3\1/2\ years, trade agreements like NAFTA cannot 
ignore the issues of wages and basic standards for workers or the 
environment, or for things we do not ordinarily talk about when we talk 
about trade, like food safety.
  I am concerned that the report that many people will be looking at 
for information about NAFTA that will be issued later this week will 
not address these serious issues either. Later this week we will be 
releasing its version, the administration, of how well NAFTA has 
worked. But I am not sure it will include a serious discussion about 
how NAFTA is depressing wages, affecting food safety, highway safety 
and a number of other issues.

                              {time}  2115

  I want to relay to you a story of one real person who has been 
affected by NAFTA, a story you will not read about in the study on 
NAFTA. I met this woman a couple weeks ago. She was from the city of El 
Paso, right on the border, a city which has more certified NAFTA job 
losses than any other city in the country. Her name is Irma Montoya.
  Ms. Montoya worked in an electronics plant in El Paso for 8 years. 
She worked hard. She paid her taxes. She played by the rules. She did 
her best. But despite her best efforts, the company shut down in El 
Paso when maquiladoras from just across the border, miles away, took 
over the work her plant did.
  And why did they do that? Of course, because they were being paid. 
She was being paid a very low salary, very close to the minimum wage in 
this country. They moved the plant just a few miles over the border 
because they could get away with paying people less than a dollar an 
hour over there.
  Now Irma received no health or pension benefits from her company. And 
despite being eligible for NAFTA job training assistance, she received 
no

[[Page H4905]]

real help. She wanted to become an accountant and was told it would be 
too expensive. So now Irma is stuck without a job, without a pension, 
without health benefits, without training. And she lives in a city 
where the unemployment rate is about 12 percent.
  NAFTA provided the incentive not only for the loss of her job but for 
the downward pressure on wages and benefits for the American workers, 
which left Irma without a pension or without health benefits. And this 
is going on all over the country.
  Just the other week my friends were here, the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Kucinich] and the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur], and the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink] and the gentlewoman from 
Missouri [Ms. Danner], and they were telling me about how these jobs 
are leaving, how people are being stranded without benefits, without 
the proper training, and it is going on all over the country. There are 
hundreds of thousands of people just like Irma Montoya all over this 
country.
  And while you will not hear about Irma Montoya later this week in the 
administration's report on NAFTA, we are going to keep coming to the 
floor. My colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley], 
who is with me, who is going to talk about this issue in just a second, 
and other colleagues are going to come here and talk about this issue 
because it needs to be aired.
  And while I do not think the NAFTA report will be all that 
enlightening, one memo that I would recommend to everyone here in this 
Chamber and in the Congress and my colleagues is to take a look at 
Professor Harley Shaiken, who was at the University of California at 
Berkeley, who has probably more knowledge on this issue than anybody in 
America and who has studied the economic relationship between the 
United States and Mexico extensively. Look at his report. Professor 
Shaiken sheds some light on what I would call the myth behind the 
increased exports to Mexico.
  There is no denying that exports to Mexico have risen since NAFTA, 
although imports from Mexico have increased more dramatically. We had 
about a $2 billion surplus with Mexico prior to NAFTA, which is only 
3\1/2\ years ago. We have a $16 billion deficit today. That is a major 
shift. That means they are sending us here a lot more than we are 
sending them there. We are sending them a few more things, but listen 
to what is happening to those things that we send them.
  He, Professor Shaiken, analyzing trade data, shows that the vast 
majority of export growth has been in what he calls the revolving door 
exports. And what do we mean by revolving door? Those are goods that 
are shipped to Mexico as components, therefore counted as exports, but 
then they are assembled right on that maquiladora border. They get over 
the line, they are assembled and they come right back here, shipped 
right back to the United States. The revolving door exports have surged 
230 percent since NAFTA, rising from $18 billion in 1993 to $42 billion 
last year.
  These exports accounted for 40 percent of our total exports to Mexico 
in 1993, but that share grew 62 percent last year. So 62 percent of our 
exports to Mexico are shipped right back here. They are assembled, put 
together by people who are making 70 cents, a dollar an hour, and then 
they are sold back here, at no reduced rates, I might add. These are 
not job-creating exports, they are job destroying exports. As Professor 
Shaiken noted in his memo, paraphrasing Pogo, ``We have met the market 
and it is us.''
  The memo also notes that NAFTA has increased for especially direct 
investment in Mexico from other nations as well. This is kind of 
interesting. Remember the claim during our debates, where the NAFTA 
proponents said that we want to pass NAFTA now to get into Mexico 
before the Europeans and the Asians could get in there?
  Well, the fact is that those nations have a trade surplus with 
Mexico. We have a $16 billion deficit, and they are investing in Mexico 
at rapid rates since NAFTA. Investments from Germany have tripled since 
NAFTA; investments from Japan have increased tenfold.
  Now keep that fact in mind when we are going to hear the same claim 
this year about going into Latin American nations before European and 
Asian nations do. We are going to hear that same argument, and it is 
just full of holes. The facts show that we will all get into those 
markets, and that rushing through an ill-conceived free-trade agreement 
does not give us any type of advantage in that respect.
  One other item from Professor Shaiken's memo that I would mention at 
this point is about continued falling real wages in Mexico. He notes 
that Mexican workers have been unable to make wage gains despite 
increased productivity. What does that mean? That means they are 
putting out more, Mexican workers are producing more, dramatically 
more, because they are hard workers and because they are working in 
newer modern facilities.
  Some of these facilities in the maquiladora, and I have traveled and 
looked at them, they are as modern as anything we have here in this 
country. So productivity in Mexico has risen 38 percent since NAFTA, 
but real hourly wages have dropped by 21 percent over the same period. 
So you figure it out. They are producing more for their executives and 
CEO's, and these corporations, mostly multinationals, productivity is 
way, way up and their wages are going down.
  And then when our workers try to get a wage increase here in their 
plants, they see multinational people who are down there and who own 
corporations up here say to our workers, ``We cannot give you any wage 
increase, cannot take care of any health or pension benefits because we 
will just go down to Mexico and we do not have to pay them anything.'' 
So they are leveraging. They are leveraging.
  Productivity in Mexico, as I said, has risen by 38 percent since 
NAFTA, but real hourly wages dropped by 21 percent. Despite the fact 
that many plants in Mexico approach or exceed United States 
productivity levels, the hourly wage in Mexican manufacturing was less 
than 10 percent of the United States levels in 1996. They make one-
tenth of what our workers make, and this is a trend that has only 
accelerated since NAFTA. This disparity between wages and productivity 
in Mexico existed well before NAFTA and during stable economic times.

  Between 1980 and 1993, manufacturing productivity in Mexico rose by 
53 percent while real wages declined by 30 percent. So you know the 
investors, the money people, the multinationals, they are doing very 
well. Their workers have been falling further and further behind, 8 
million falling into poverty from the middle class in Mexico.
  That fact led many of us during the NAFTA debate in 1993 to call for 
a linkage between wages and productivity in Mexico and for ensuring the 
rights of workers in Mexico, that those rights were honored, but our 
cause went unheeded. And the problem has only gotten worse, as we have 
already seen. So this is a trend, I think, that is going to continue on 
and on unless we seriously address these issues of wages and worker 
rights in our trade agreement.
  The current system is tragic for working people both in the United 
States and in Mexico and in Canada, as well. It does not have to be 
permanent, though. The people of Mexico spoke on Sunday, and the 
American people through us in Congress will have a chance to speak this 
fall when we have this debate.
  We need to remember that this trade debate is not just about markets 
and trade barriers; it is about jobs, it is about living standards, it 
is about human rights, it is about human dignity. Human dignity. These 
struggles we are about to engage in have been fought in this country 
before and around the world by earlier generations of workers.
  At the turn of this century, 100 years ago, the industrial revolution 
brought massive change, just as the global economy and technology and 
information are changing the landscape today. And at that time, giant 
corporations tried to do the same thing. They tried to control the 
process. But the people got wise, they figured it out. They figured out 
they were being exploited. They figured out their land was being 
exploited, and they banded together. They formed labor unions and they 
formed progressive movements. They came together and fought back and 
they made a difference. That struggle led to the creation of a system 
of labor

[[Page H4906]]

and social and health rules which increase our living standards in this 
country.
  If it was not for people coming together, led mostly by labor unions 
in this country, we would not have a minimum wage, we would not outlaw 
child labor, we would not have weekends, we would not have a 40-hour 
work week, we would not have an 8-hour day, we would not have health 
benefits. We have to remind ourselves sometimes that people banding 
together can make a difference.
  But it is that very system that is under attack today, and we cannot 
afford to go backward 100 years. This debate is about our economic 
future, and whether we want to take our Nation forward or go back to an 
era in this Nation in which workers' rights were not guaranteed and in 
which a few wealthy corporations controlled our economy.
  This is a fight against transnationals, multinational corporations. 
That is what this is about. There are very few governments standing up 
to them today. Labor is on the decline in many parts. Although I might 
just say in this country it is on the rebound, and it is becoming more 
vibrant and more organized, and they are organizing more workers every 
day because of the statistics I read to you.
  I predict in Mexico, with the demise of their labor leader, who 
passed at 96 and who was, I believe, corrupt and did not serve working 
people well, and with the demise of the PRR government, we will see 
stronger labor unions, we will see people banding together in 
progressive units and demanding a fair and just wage.
  So we do not want to go back as a nation to where we were 100 years 
ago. We want a trade policy that is going to move us forward. That is 
what this debate is about, and that is why we are here talking about 
it, so that people can understand some of the other side of the issue.
  We are going to get a report, as I said twice or three times this 
evening, from the administration this week on NAFTA; and I would ask 
the people to look at that in its entirety. They are not going to hear 
in that report about food processing or they are not going to hear 
about food safety.
  Let me talk about food safety for just a second. Then I want to yield 
to my good friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley], the 
ranking member of the Committee on Rules. Remember a few months ago the 
strawberry scare in this country, contaminated strawberries came in 
from Mexico? Hundreds and hundreds of kids in this country, 
particularly in my State of Michigan, were affected. We had 1,100 kids 
who had to go get vaccine shots, a series of very difficult shots, and 
hundreds of them were sick.
  That has happened with wheat, and it is happening with other foods. 
And, of course, the drug problem. You know, we tried to negotiate a 
tougher drug deal than NAFTA, but we caved. Drugs are coming in here at 
incredible rates, an incredible rate. Seventy percent of the cocaine 
coming into this country comes through Mexico, 25 percent of the 
heroin, and it is passing through every day. It is a wave line down in 
Texas.
  They inspect trucks. They inspect 1 truck out of 200. Eleven thousand 
trucks come across the border. Eleven thousand trucks come across the 
border every day. One out of every two hundred get inspected. So lots 
of drugs are coming in here. The NAFTA agreement was one of the worst 
agreements this country ever signed and engaged in.
  I am not opposed to having an agreement with Mexico. They are good 
people. They are hard-working people. They have a new chance for a new 
beginning. I want a good trade relationship, but I want a relationship 
that will elevate their workers to our standards, rather than bringing 
our workers down to their poverty standards. That is not too much to 
ask. That is what the Europeans did when Portugal and Greece wanted 
into the European Union, you know, an economic market union that is 
strong and vibrant.

                              {time}  2130

  But the Europeans said to Greece and to Portugal, ``Before you come 
in, you have got to meet a few standards here on food safety, you have 
got to meet a few standards on wages, on productivity, a few other 
things. And then we will let you in.'' And these countries said, 
``Well, that's reasonable, that's fair, we'll do that.'' They met those 
standards and they were accepted and they are part of the union. That 
is what we were trying to get with a good NAFTA. But instead, we got 
one of the worst pieces of legislation, I believe, this country has 
ever engaged in.
  I thank my colleague from Massachusetts for staying so late and 
participating in this. I appreciate his leadership on this issue and 
his passion for working people. He is one of the great leaders of this 
body on Central American issues. I remember vividly the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. Moakley] leading the effort to bring justice and 
dignity to El Salvador. I thank him for joining me this evening.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my leader, and my dear friend from 
Michigan. I do not think there is anybody in this House who is a better 
friend to American workers than the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Bonior]. He knows that NAFTA was a bad idea and he is really speaking 
out on this issue. He is on the right side of this issue.
  I was in my office watching my leader speaking on this thing when my 
telephone rang and a young lady from Milton, Massachusetts called up 
and said, ``I'm looking at my television set and I notice the gentleman 
from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] speaking on NAFTA. How do you stand on 
NAFTA?'' I said, ``I voted against NAFTA, as did the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Bonior].'' But there are people out there that the 
gentleman has really educated this evening with some of the facts that 
he has given, and I am sure that many votes might change as a result of 
it.
  Mr. Speaker, the North American Free-Trade Agreement has been a bad 
idea. It has been bad news to the American economy, it has been bad 
news for the American workers, it has been bad news for the Mexican 
workers, and before the passage of NAFTA, the United States had a trade 
surplus with Mexico, but since the passage of NAFTA our trade deficit 
has ballooned to $16.1 billion.
  Mr. Speaker, a $16.1 billion deficit is hardly good news for the 
economy. The deficit in large part is due to the revolving door 
exports. In fact, Mr. Speaker, 62 percent of our exports to Mexico were 
revolving door exports, which mean that our raw goods were sent to 
Mexico, assembled by Mexican workers and sent back to the United 
States.
  Before the NAFTA agreement, Mr. Speaker, only 22 percent of our 
exports to Mexico were revolving door exports. These exports, along 
with other conditions of this agreement, have cost American workers 
wages and in many cases cost American workers their jobs. In fact since 
1993, NAFTA has cost American workers over 420,000 jobs. That is right, 
Mr. Speaker, 420,000 jobs have been lost as a result of NAFTA. The 
Department of Labor has certified that in the years 1994 and 1995, 
52,000 Americans lost jobs in 400 U.S. plants since the passage of 
NAFTA. Many of these workers, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, came from my 
home State, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
  Since the start of NAFTA, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been 
shifted to maquiladora production plants, which pay very low wages for 
work done right on our border. As of March of this year, the 
maquiladora plants employed more than 861,000 Mexican workers in over 
2,600 plants. These plants are taking American jobs from all over the 
country. In fact, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, just this year, 
the Osram Sylvania Co., a fluorescent light manufacturing plant, sent 
160 jobs to Mexico. When asked why they moved, company officials said, 
``The move was NAFTA-related.''
  For those American jobs that have not gone to Mexico, the threat is 
always there that they will go, and for that reason American wages have 
stayed low, closer to Mexican wages.
  In fact, the NAFTA Labor Secretariat found that half the American 
firms used threats of moving to Mexico to fight union organizing. When 
forced to bargain with labor organizers, 15 percent of the firms 
actually closed part or all of a plant. That is triple the rate of 
shutdowns before NAFTA.
  But, Mr. Speaker, despite what has happened to our workers, despite 
what has happened to our economy, the people who are suffering most are 
the

[[Page H4907]]

Mexican workers. Their wages are less than one-third of what they were 
in 1980. Some 14.9 percent of Mexicans live below the poverty rate, 
which is less than $1 a day. In fact, the Mexican Government even has 
policies to hold down the wages to attract investments despite the 
thousands of people living on less than $1 a day.
  In 1995, one out of every five Mexican workers worked for less than 
the Mexican minimum wage, and 66 percent got no benefits whatsoever.
  Since Mexican workers do not make very much money, they can barely 
afford to put food on the table, much less buy American products. 
Mexican infant mortality is very high, 13 deaths per 1,000 live births. 
For those children who do survive, 10 million of them are sent to work, 
violating Mexico's own child labor law.
  From what I can tell, Mr. Speaker, nothing at all has been done about 
the horrendous environmental degradation in Mexico. Thirty percent of 
the population of Mexico have no access to sanitation. I have heard 
that some of the workers that live in some of these new industries that 
have gone down to Mexico are still living in refrigerator crates.
  Mr. BONIOR. The gentleman makes a very good point. The American 
Medical Association, in examining this border, the maquiladora border 
that the gentleman is talking about, termed it a cesspool of infectious 
disease. This is our American Medical Association. That is how bad the 
environmental degradation is in that area, and that has caused, as the 
gentleman has correctly stated, numerous health problems, literally 
babies born without brains. There are hideous examples of deformities, 
just unconscionable activities on the part of the corporations that 
have gone down there and the governments that have allowed it to 
happen. I thank the gentleman for raising that point.
  Mr. MOAKLEY. The gentleman from Michigan is absolutely correct. On 
some days the children in Mexico City can hardly breathe. This polluted 
air is making its way into this country. The ozone levels in El Paso, 
TX have increased steadily since NAFTA. The rate of hepatitis in the 
border region of the United States has risen to about four times the 
U.S. average.
  Mr. Speaker, hepatitis is a very contagious disease that does not 
respect borders, yet the NAFTA agreement looks the other way. As the 
gentleman from Michigan alluded to, we import fruits and vegetables 
from a country that has virtually no environmental regulations and that 
many times these fruits and vegetables are filled with pesticides that 
are not even allowed in our country.
  But despite all of these problems, Mr. Speaker, the administration 
now is proposing expanding NAFTA to Chile and possibly the rest of the 
southern hemisphere. I think this is a very dangerous idea. Any 
agreement we make should include very serious and very specific 
regulations on labor, on the environment, and on human rights. These 
conditions should not be left for later action because, as we have seen 
with this trade agreement, provisions that were left out of the 
original agreement never really happened.

  I am glad to join my leader, an expert on this matter, and I look 
forward to continuing this debate with him.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for his leadership and passion on 
this issue and for bringing to light some of the important facts on 
workers' rights and health and safety. We appreciate the gentleman's 
contribution.

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